By Barbara Santich
'To achieve the highest possible standards in theory
and practice': this was the aim of the conveners of the Fourth Symposium of
Australian Gastronomy, held in Sydney from 16 to 18 October 1988.
On the whole, these ideals were realised, and
appreciated by participants - though some regretted the absence of discussion
time after presentation of papers: the Panglossian solution to conference
planning remains elusive.
Food in festivity, in a festive city, in a year of
(Bicentennial) festivity - and what more appropriate emblem than cakes, which
participants were asked to contribute for the Sunday evening reception.
Borrowed cakes, by and large; as a nation which, as Michael Symons pointed out,
has no proper festival and scarcely knows how to be festive, we have no
traditional festive foods, although we do have a distinctive genre of cake
decorating which uses medicinal syringes to create the finest and most
intricate designs. So the festive cakes included several gâteaux des rois,
Greek and Polish Easter breads, a Hungarian honey and poppyseed cake, and an
American gourmet fruit cake. The Australian note was provided by a selection of
decorated cakes lent by specialist decorator Anthea Leonard, whose
materialisations of Dame Edna next to Barry's birthday hot water bottle, of a
come-hither courtesan in languorous pose alongside a fascinatingly grotesque
clump of broccoli, were totally eclipsed by her re-creation of the Sydney
Harbour Bridge astride a hedonistic blue harbour dotted with sailing boats.
Still on the subject of festive cakes, Dr. Betty
Meehan, of the Australian Museum, gave an illustrated talk on the festive
breads of the Arnhem Land Aborigines, showing the care and the rituals
associated with their preparation. In addition to the cakes, 'Bush Tucker'
provided the menu for the reception, beginning with witchetty grubs, lightly
barbecued (actually, a close relative of the desert 'witjuti' variety): a
succulent taste sensation, with a faint prawn flavour, to some palates, or
nutty, to others, and in texture rather like thin, crisp pork crackling on a
cushion of tender and juicy fat. Then kangaroo, in two guises - one in the
style of a York ham, the other like German smoked beef - accompanied by
chutneys made from native fruits, the Illawarra plum and the rosella; plus
cooked buffalo, spiced with native pepper; a salad of mangrove samphire, subtle
and intriguingly salty; a salad of wild greens with macadamia nuts and
macadamia nut oil; bread made with the ground nuts of the Burrawang palm; and
finally, a beverage made from roasted and ground wattle seeds which, suitably
diluted and sweetened, found favour with some participants.
Proceedings proper began the following day at the Powerhouse
Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences. Early arrivals were taken on a guided tour
of the Museum's Social History exhibition, which featured two Australian
kitchens, evoking a slab hut in the bush around 1890 and a suburban bungalow of
the 1920s. A small showcase of celebratory banquet menus - the earliest dated
1858 - continued the Food in Festivity theme.
Don Dunstan, former premier of South Australia and
remembered, in gastronomic circles, for his far-sighted Don Dunstan's Cookbook, gave the opening address: 'Tradition and
Renewal in Australian Gastronomy'. His interpretation of 'gastronomy' stressed
the culinary side, but his then-and-now comparisons relating culinary modes to
lifestyles revealed an enormous shift in Australian values and customs. To
elaborate on the theme, Vic Cherikoff, a native foods consultant, spoke of the
potential of the 10,000 or so indigenous ingredients which had been part of
Aboriginal diets for centuries, and forcefully expressed his belief in an
agricultural revolution which would see - in some environments - the
flora-destructive hard-hoofed mammals replaced by native, soft-footed
marsupials to be humanely and efficiently harvested for human consumption. (As
it happened, there was a strong undercurrent throughout the symposium in favour
of the consumption of kangaroo meat; only in South Australia and Tasmania is it
legally possible to trade in kangaroo meat, the eastern states being still
dominated by the concerns of the meat lobby.)* Dr Judy Messer also hoped for a revolution
in agriculture, but of a different order - towards a more ecologically-aware
system where soil and natural forest degradation would be minimised.
Lunch: and a complete change of scene after a
ten-minute bus trip to the Domain, on the edge of Sydney Harbour, looking
towards the Opera House and Bridge over sparkling blue water, for a picnic
under the Moreton Bay figs. The weather was kind, the picnic hampers (for
groups of six) full of simple but sensible fare assembled by Damien Pignolet -
bread and olives and hunks of parmesan, hard-boiled eggs and a paper twist of
sea salt, venison salami and cherry tomatoes and radishes, a Savoy sponge and a
knife to cut it with and Band-Aids in case the knife slipped, all accompanied
by spring water and light red and white wines. People kicked off their shoes
and relaxed, as was intended (except when they trod on a bindi-eye); this was
the free-and-easy camaraderie, which typifies our symposia.
Philip Searle, who created the memorable banquet for
the First Symposium, again demonstrated his culinary artistry at a 'supper' at
his Oasis Seros restaurant. Small, deep-fried taro pastries filled with pork
and prawns and accompanied by Asian-inspired salads were followed by quail,
stuffed with wild and black rice, wrapped in lotus leaves and baked in clay -
and more seductively flavoured, succulent quail would be hard to find. Then
came Searle's culinary tour de force,
his trademark chequerboard ice cream associating the flavours of pineapple,
vanilla, star anise and liquorice, but in a metre-square version weighing 100
kg and needing six broad shoulders to bear it in triumph to the table. Also on
a larger-than-life scale were the irregular slabs of cardamom-scented
honeycomb, which came with the coffee, looking like surrealistic snowman
footprints on bare, white-papered tables.
The stated theme of the symposium was addressed the
next day: festivities and foods. Anthony Corones philosophised on the idea of
festivity, looking at the occasion itself and the enjoyment of the festival.
Limiting my scope to the secular festivity, I analysed the evolution of the
banquet, from its inception in fifteenth-century Italy and its subsequent
adoption as a literary device (by Rablais and Erasmus, for example) to the mass
banquets of post-Revolution France and the banquet as political propaganda.
Refining the theme even further, Graham Pont described the banquets of Louis
XIV at Versailles, illustrating his talk with images of the 'Pleasures of the
Enchanted Isle' and contemporary music by Lully and Lalande.
The brief presentations after morning coffee
demonstrated visually the settings and styles of Italian fifteenth-century
banquets, the implements used to produce elaborate party food in Victorian
Australia, and the decorative cakes which marked birthdays, anniversaries,
weddings, engagements and all the other rites of family life in Australia.
Another paper described the participation by whites in Aboriginal corroborrees
in the early nineteenth century, and the reciprocal participation of
Aboriginals in white celebrations. Finally, Michael Symons looked at festivals
- that is, public holidays - in this country, and concluded that neither do we
have festivals, in the traditional sense, nor we do we know how to be festive;
further, we have yet to develop appropriate festivals, and an appropriate style
of festivity, for our Antipodes.
And yet ... lunch at The Wharf restaurant, again
overlooking the harbour on another sparkling blue-and-white day, echoed an
Australian festival tradition, of sorts: beer and prawns, prawns and beer,
Friday nights at the RSL club. But these were warm, fresh-cooked prawns, the
beer was boutique-brewed Hahn, and everyone remained civilised. It was a long,
leisurely and hedonistic lunch, with only anticipation of the evening's banquet
- catered by Gay Bilson and her staff, as Berowra Waters Out - taxing the
intellectual spheres. Pier 13, it was announced; 8.30 for 8.35 p.m.
And promptly at 8.30, bejewelled and
bare-shouldered, we assembled at the wharf where once we had farewelled parents
and friends about to embark on the Overseas Experience. The air was still, as
warm and smooth as velvet, as we sipped champagne and engulfed freshly-opened
oysters from an imperceptibly-diminishing platter, gazing on a remote illuminated
city and an oddly compressed Bridge. Inside the hall - decorated only by Gay
Bilson's selection of quotations (all to do with the nature of cuisine and art)
- we sat at tables arranged in the form of an open rectangle and garnished with
loaves of bread, and observed, on the one hand, the streamlined, sometimes
frenetic activities of the makeshift kitchen, and on the other, the more
primitive ritual of siphoning wines from large barriques. We ate prawns, in the
form of an intense and rich consommé with small wonton-like parcels of prawns;
rice, as a buttery black risotto with squid ink, topped with pale pink strips
of squid; salad, as well-dressed rocket plus croutons, small chunks of speck
and a small poached egg; hare, as slices of seared and rare fillet, accompanied
by a beetroot and tomato puree; sweets, delicate short pastry rounds
sandwiching a citrus cream; pies, proper little mince pies with a spicy meat
and fruit filling. Then came the party, last item on the menu, disco music and
dancing, but by then most of the symposiasts were retiring ...
And so to bed, to dreams, to reveries, to the next
symposium: South Australia, 1990.
* This was the case when my report was written in
1988, but regulations have since changed. Our serving of kangaroo in New South
Wales - even at a private function - almost led to the conveners being charged!